[X] My Assistant

[Redstone]

According to the NASA TV schedule, there is an MER news conference set for September 1, at 1 pm EDT (5 pm GMT). Take it with a pinch of salt, because these schedules change a lot. Whenever it happens it will be shown on NASA TV.

This is the first press conference since when? I can't remember when we saw the last one...

I'm guessing this is when we'll see the "Mother of all Panoramas". Hopefully some news on the science too, and future route plans.

[Jeff7]

Some things have me concerned though - hasn't Spirit been tilted generally the same direction for quite some time now? For the most part, it's been facing north. What happens if it ventures onto the south side of the hills? It might be out of the main winds then.
And there's Ultreya (did I spell that right?) - if that turns out to be a lot of dark sand, going in that area could leave the rover open to a lot of dust deposits. Hopefully they'd avoid going down there if that is the case. Pictures from afar would have to suffice.

[Guest_Myran_*]

algorimancer said:  I really wanted someone to ask for speculation about Homeplate's geology. This strikes me as a real anomaly

The geology of Homeplate are indeed what should be the main objective for the rover right now if you ask me. What little we know from remote images tells us it might indeed be one anomaly, and at least something different from what we seen in Gusev so far.

Jeff7 said: Pictures from afar would have to suffice.

Agreed on that one, I used to be intruiged by that dark spot in orbital images, but we already have seen several of the other smaller spots in these hills now, and there were nothing special about those. So remote sensing could be quite enough. Dust deposits there could even be very loose, we've seen a bit of that earlier.

[ElkGroveDan]

Has anyone located a stream of this press conference? CSPAN used to archive them, but they suddenly dropped them cold earlier this year.

I don't have any Mars Bars but if anyone can find me the press conference I'll meet you instead at my local "bar" for a round.

http://www.elkgrovebrewery.com/

[SigurRosFan]

" The highest point in the "Columbia Hills" inside Mars' Gusev Crater, the summit of "Husband Hill," sits 82 meters above the plains at the base of the hills. For comparison, this image shows the Statue of Liberty, which is 93 meters tall from the foundation of its pedestal to the top of Liberty's torch."

http://www.br-online.de/wissen-bildung/the...band-statue.jpg (25 KB)

[jamescanvin]

Thanks  James, it was not meant as a criticism, I was just kicking myself. Do you work at U.N.S.W., my son has just started his 1st year Chem/Physics Deg there ?

Yeah, I got that you were just kicking yourself, and pointing out that it had (just) been mentioned here so you'd kick yourself even more.

I actually work at U.Syd but thankfully we got invited to Steves talk as well, was certainly worth taking a few hours off for!

Cheers, James

[glennwsmith]

SigurRosFan -- Cool picture with the Statue of Liberty -- many reverberations from that! It does give you a sense of how high Husband Hill is. --Glenn

[Tom Tamlyn]

Has anyone located a stream of this press conference?  CSPAN used to archive them, but they suddenly dropped them cold earlier this year.

The JPL rover site archives a few of the briefings, on a sporadic and unpredictable basis.

I've always had trouble finding a link to the page without googling. http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mer/briefing.cfm The September 1 briefing isn't there now.

The only other source I know of for Rover briefings is the "plus" subscription service offered by spaceflightnow.com. I signed up towards the end of 2004, when it became clear that we couldn't rely on C-SPAN for Mars Rover archives anymore.

The SFN "plus" service is expensive ($50/year), and I've found it disappointing. The site is extremely focused on manned spaceflight and the commercial booster industry, at the expense of its coverage of unmanned space exploration. I seem to recall several reasonably significant press conferences which I hoped to find on SFN, but didn't. (Can't recall specifics.) Quite a few of the Rover press conferences are archived at a tiny resolution, and many can't be downloaded. (I've noticed that recent briefings are larger and consistently downloadable.)

Finally, the SFN site is organized in an extremely confusing way, and I can rarely find anything in the archives without thrashing around.

HOWEVER, you will find the September 1 Rover press conference on the SFN "plus" service, as well as very complete coverage of prior briefings (including many pre-launch briefings) and (for the hard core) some clips of the landings.

Tom Tamlyn

[Sym05]

Has anyone located a stream of this press conference?  CSPAN used to archive them, but they suddenly dropped them cold earlier this year.

I recorded the stream at home, the file is 60 Mb.
If legal I can put it somewhere (eg. rapidshare.de) this evening.

[paxdan]

I recorded the stream at home, the file is 60 Mb.
If legal I can put it somewhere (eg. rapidshare.de) this evening.

IANAL but as far as i know all US gov stuff, e.g., nasa images etc., is by definition public domain:

from wikipedia
Works produced by civilian and military employees of the United States federal government in the scope of their employment are public domain by statute. However, note that, despite popular misconception, the U.S. Federal Government can own copyrights that are assigned to it by others. As a general rule photographs on .mil and .gov sites are public domain.

also

NASA images generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages.

i dont see a problem with posting it...

[CosmicRocker]

I noticed that NASA TV did at least show one replay of the conference on their Video File program, but I haven't noticed it again. I guess it is hard for a press conference about a lowly, unmanned space mission to compete with important stuff, like month-old Space Station and Shuttle reruns.

[Sym05]

i dont see a problem with posting it...

Ok, for the legal part is better to check before

The file is Pressconf-01-09-2005_top_of_the_hill.rm

Due to rapidshare limits I splitted the file in a brutal manner (unable to find a .rm video splitter) using Gsplit 1.8.

Here the two segments:
Segment1
Segment2

..and the executable to rejoin:
Joiner